November 12, 2011

By
Aditi
Phadnis / New Delhi, Business Standard, November 12, 2011, 0:28 IST

Later
this month, Mamata Banerjee will have been chief minister of West Bengal for
six months. Time for a balance sheet?

First,
all the things she’s managed to get done — only because they’re easier to
count. She’s taken some positive steps to revive the glory of the Presidency College
of Kolkata, the institution that has given India some of its best thinkers.
She’s managed to defuse the Gorkhaland crisis by offering a tripartite
agreement, paving the way for the setting up of the Gorkhaland Territorial
Administration (GTA) — an elected body for the Darjeeling hills.

But
most of all, she has managed to establish a reputation as the most vociferous
critic of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) within the UPA.

When
the Centre increased the price of LPG earlier this year, Banerjee first
resisted (“the Centre did not take us into confidence…” and so on). Then she
took on a mien of martyred indignation (“the state government will bear the
burden of the increase in LPG prices”) unconcerned about the fact that the
state government’s finances are in no shape to take on the burden. She
threatened to withdraw from the UPA over the current round of petrol price
increase, only to recant later.

A
Union minister has referred to Banerjee as a compulsive populist. It is hard to
dispute this description.

Take
her government’s attitude towards the price of electricity. West Bengal is
considered a role model in power sector reform. The West Bengal State
Electricity Board (WBSEB) was trifurcated as part of power sector reforms that
began in 1985. In 2005-06, the state also corporatised transmission and
distribution. There are three power companies in the state now, carved out of
the electricity board that together showed a profit of over Rs 300 crore for
2010-11. The government did not privatise: and those employed by power
companies (30,000 or so employees) are the only ones to get their salaries
regularly because they don’t depend on the state government.

But
things can change very fast. Demand for power has been rising and so has the
price of coal in a state that depends mostly on thermal power. With the massive
electoral victory in her pocket, Banerjee could have increased the cost of
electricity in the first week of assuming power without any difficulty.
Instead, after she took over as chief minister, one of her first meetings was
with the power secretary and her bottom line was: electricity prices will not
be increased. In Kolkata, the only area where a private sector entity provides
power, the cost of electricity was increased in April 2011 in sync with the
cost of coal, and it is likely to increase again. In the summer of 2010, West
Bengal had a peak demand shortage of between 500 Mw and 700 Mw, which is
expected to go up to between 800 Mw and 1000 Mw this summer. A perfectly
healthy sector is going to be driven to sickness: because Banerjee doesn’t want
to become unpopular.

But
what she doesn’t realise is her troops are making her extremely unpopular.
Somen Mitra, a Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP, took the unprecedented step of
bypassing his own party to complain to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a
letter about the activities of chit fund operators in Parliament — an important
MP from his own party is a big chit fund “entrepreneur” and was admitted to the
TMC by Banerjee only recently.

The
biggest problem (although it is not clear if she sees it as such) is: Banerjee
is TMC and TMC is Banerjee. Take her handling of the Maoist problem in the
Junglemahal region. Subhendu Adhikari, described by TMC watchers as the man of
the future, organised the TMC’s victory in east Midnapore. Adhikari ensured the
Left was routed in this area using his supporters, but also the rather more
persuasive powers of the gun. He is considered intelligent, popular and
ruthless. In Banerjee’s dictionary this spells threat. So, she bypassed him and
asked another leader Mukul Roy to handle the Junglemahal problem. Roy made no
headway. So now Adhikari is back.

The
thing is: no one knows who is in and who’s out. So the impulse is to ensure
there is enough for dinner tomorrow, for who knows what might happen at
breakfast today?

For
the moment, Banerjee has little to fear from the parliamentary opposition. The
Left Front’s disarray is embarrassing. Ill-health dogs former Chief Minister
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, especially ahead of party meetings. The Left trade
unionists are lethargic, missing even the opportunity to mobilise state
government employees who are now beginning to get annoyed at the fact that
their DA has not been revised because the state government doesn’t have the money.

But
the challenges are snapping at Banerjee’s heels. West Bengal will see panchayat
elections in 2012. How will the TMC fare? Will these elections represent the
first glimmers of a Left comeback?

If
Banerjee goes on like this, she will be the one to have scripted it!

Kolkata : In an unprecedented intervention, West Bengal Chief Minister
Mamata Banerjee stormed a Kolkata police station late last evening and forced
the release of two members of her party arrested for rioting, arson and
ransacking the police station about an hour earlier.

The police action came after the men — along with a mob of 300 —
clashed with policemen from the Bhowanipore police station who had asked them
not to burst high-decibel crackers late in the evening outside a cancer
institute and a children’s hospital, and block both carriageways of S P
Mukherjee Road, a major south Kolkata thoroughfare.

The men were part of a boisterous Jagaddhatri Puja immersion
party. The puja is controlled and managed by one Jagannath Sau, a close
associate of Baban Banerjee, one of Mamata Banerjee’s brothers.

Jagannath Sau has six cases — including extortion and cases under
the Arms Act — against him, said the officer-in-charge of Bhowanipore police
station. Sau was present at the spot — as was Baban Banerjee. Sau allegedly
supplies building material to local Congress and Trinamool leaders and men
engaged in real estate promotion.

Chief Minister Banerjee — who rushed to Bhowanipore police station
from her Harish Chatterjee Street residence nearby — reportedly shouted at
Kolkata Police Commissioner R K Pachnanda, Divisional Deputy Commissioner (South)
D P Singh, and the head of the police station for stopping the immersion party.
The chief minister also has charge of the state home department, and the police
report directly to her.

Trouble began at around 9.30 pm. Local club Bhowanipore Players
Association was taking its Jagaddhatri idol for immersion in a procession that
was led by a loud band from the Sebak Sangha club, which is located at 14/1
Rani Sankari Lane, very close to where Banerjee lives.

A DJ was playing “masala Hindi numbers”, witnesses said; and both
carriageways of S P Mukherjee Road were blocked as club members set off loud
crackers right in front of Chittaranjan Cancer Institute.

A police request to club members not to disrupt traffic and
disturb patients quickly degenerated into an argument, and the policemen were
pelted with stones and bottles. Police retaliated with a lathicharge, and the
mob entered the Bhowanipore police station, destroyed property and tried to set
fire to several vehicles parked outside the police station. Private vehicles on
the road were attacked as well.

The chief minister arrived on the scene at around 10.45 pm —
apparently walking all the way after receiving news that some of her party
members and supporters had been attacked by police in what is a Trinamool
stronghold. She allegedly rebuked the Bhowanipore police station OC for having
obstructed the Puja procession, and got the police to release two men who had
been arrested for the rioting.

Tapas Saha and Sambhu Sau were allowed to go without cases being registered
against them, sources said. No case has been registered against the procession
organisers either. Officially police denied having taken anyone into custody.

Saha works full-time at Banerjee’s Kalighat party office. He is
secretary of the Bhowanipore club, and has recently got a job with the Indian
Railways. He was reportedly taken to hospital with injuries on his legs.

Sambhu Sau said, “Police arrested me and Tapas, threw us in the
lock-up and began beating us. We are members of Trinamool Congress. The police
refused to release us even after our leaders, Dr Nirmal Majhi, Dulal Sen, and
Minister for Urban Development Firhad Hakim reached the police station. They
relented only after Didi arrived. Didi is God to us. Didi arranged for my
treatment and sent Tapas to hospital.”

Ratan Malakar, Trinamool councillor from Ward No. 73 where the
club is located, said, “When our appeal to the police failed, Didi intervened.
Her brother Baban Banerjee also reached the police station.”

Subhajeet Goon of Sebak Sangha club said, “After police told us to
stop bursting crackers and playing loud music, we told them to take a look at
our club banner and the address. Our club is located just beside Didi’s
residence. But the officer started abusing. After that we could not control our
rage.”

Goon added that Sebak Sangha members had gone to Banerjee’s home
at around 10.30 pm to complain. “Didi did not waste time and rushed to the
police station. Didi got our brothers released.”

D P Singh, DC (South), said, “We are yet to identify the people
who ransacked the police station. We have started an inquiry. Some people were
bursting loud crackers in front of the hospital and they were asked to stop
doing that. In no time, they attacked our officers and the police station.”

An inquiry has been ordered into the alleged police failure, it
was learnt from official sources.

Is the Trinamool Congress' reaction to
the recent hike in petrol prices about its ‘tolerance' wearing thin or about
fending off charges of complicity?

By threatening to pull out of the
United Progressive Alliance government over the recent hike in petrol prices,
the Trinamool Congress leadership is trying to wriggle out of a politically
deleterious situation in which the Centre finds itself, as disaffection mounts
over the spiralling prices of essential items.

Needless to say, the threat is being
made from a position of strength, the Trinamool Congress being the second
largest constituent of the UPA. If carried out, it could pull the rug from
under the feet of the government.

Whether the threat will be carried out
or not is, of course, another matter. But the Prime Minister is certainly in
for some hard bargaining on his return from his overseas tour if the apple-cart
is not to be upset. For, all such threats — by definition in political parlance
— are, for all practical purposes, pressure tactics.

Under attack in recent times from both the
Left parties and, albeit with less stridency, the Bharatiya Janata Party, for
not speaking out against economic polices of the scam-tainted Congress-led
government at the Centre, the Trinamool Congress has found in the fourth hike
in petrol prices this year an opportunity to express its resentment over not
being consulted by the Congress in matters of major consequence, despite being
a constituent of the UPA.

And in one fell swoop, it would also
invalidate claims by her political rivals that she, by being a silent spectator
in the government, is apathetic to the problems of the common man buffeted by
the rise in the prices of essential commodities.

That the Trinamool Congress is peeved
over the Congress riding roughshod over it was made clear in the reminder by
its chairperson and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee that while a
pullout by the party would result in the toppling of the government at the
Centre, it enjoyed a majority on its own and was not dependant on the Congress
to stay in power in West Bengal.

Doubtless, the Congress in West Bengal
plays second fiddle to the Trinamool — a political liaison that has rarely been
harmonious but has survived because of the Congress in New Delhi insisting that
it has. One can already see some more disgruntled sections of the Congress in
the State secretly delighting in Ms. Banerjee's most recent posturing.

“Somebody has to bell the cat. If we
are outside the government, we can at least speak in the interests of the
people,” Ms. Banerjee has remarked. But it would be politically naïve to assume
that the rise in the prices of petroleum products, the growing rate of food
inflation and the consequent burden on the common man are the only reasons for
her grouse.

Ever since assuming power in May, she
has been expressing her displeasure over the Centre for failing to provide her
government with a special financial package that would bail the State economy
out of the bankruptcy it has allegedly inherited. The issue dominates her
rhetoric. Is the pullout threat also a pressure tactic for extracting from the
Centre the financial assistance?

By her own admission, the government of
which her party is a part, has been responsible for the rise in prices of
petroleum products “eleven times in twelve months” which she feels is
“intolerable.” This begs the question why the Trinamool Congress was not as
assertive of its opposition to the price hikes then, the way it is now. If one
goes by what Ms. Banerjee has to say, it is the party's “tolerance” which is
now wearing thin.

Or is it that the Trinamool Congress is
finding it difficult to fend off charges of complicity each time there has been
a rise in prices and of pursing an economic line that is no different from that
of the Congress? For that has been the argument of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist), its principal adversary in West Bengal.

At least the threat of a pullout from
the government and all the hype it generates could be designed to project the
impression that the party is not just sympathetic to the common man's concerns
but that its position in the government should be taken more seriously by the
Congress.

After all, over the past two-and-a-half
years “we have not even been given a room [for the party] in Parliament,” not
to talk of “we not willing to accept the burden [price rise] being thrust on
the people,” according to Ms. Banerjee.

And even before one can doubt the
seriousness of intent, she pre-empts any questions that could be asked in
reference to it. The Trinamool Congress is not “blackmailing or bargaining” as
might be made out by some, Ms. Banerjee, who has always had a penchant for
histrionics, has said. “Forgive us, but we have not done any wrong,” she says,
her hands folded.